climate

• chief factors causing fluctuations are land elevation, cosmic clouds, and oceans

57:8.22With this in­crease in land el­e­va­tion the first cli­matic dif­fer­ences of the planet ap­peared. Land el­e­va­tion, cos­mic clouds, and oceanic in­flu­ences are the chief fac­tors in cli­matic fluc­tu­a­tion. The back­bone of the Asi­atic land mass reached a height of al­most nine miles at the time of the max­i­mum land emer­gence. Had there been much mois­ture in the air hov­er­ing over these highly el­e­vated re­gions, enor­mous ice blan­kets would have formed; the ice age would have ar­rived long be­fore it did. It was sev­eral hun­dred mil­lions of years be­fore so much land again ap­peared above wa­ter.

• attribute of troposphere

58:2.6The lower five or six miles of the earth’s at­mo­sphere is the tro­po­sphere; this is the re­gion of winds and air cur­rents which pro­vide weather phe­nom­ena. Above this re­gion is the in­ner iono­sphere and next above is the strato­sphere. As­cend­ing from the sur­face of the earth, the tem­per­a­ture steadily falls for six or eight miles, at which height it reg­is­ters around 70 de­grees be­low zero F. This tem­per­a­ture range of from 65 to 70 de­grees be­low zero F. is un­changed in the fur­ther as­cent for forty miles; this realm of con­stant tem­per­a­ture is the strato­sphere. At a height of forty-five or fifty miles, the tem­per­a­ture be­gins to rise, and this in­crease con­tin­ues un­til, at the level of the au­ro­ral dis­plays, a tem­per­a­ture of 1200° F. is at­tained, and it is this in­tense heat that ion­izes the oxy­gen. But tem­per­a­ture in such a rar­efied at­mo­sphere is hardly com­pa­ra­ble with heat reck­on­ing at the sur­face of the earth. Bear in mind that one half of all your at­mo­sphere is to be found in the first three miles. The height of the earth’s at­mo­sphere is in­di­cated by the high­est au­ro­ral stream­ers—about four hun­dred miles.

59:6.1This pe­riod marks the end of piv­otal evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment in ma­rine life and the open­ing of the tran­si­tion pe­riod lead­ing to the sub­se­quent ages of land an­i­mals.

59:6.2This age was one of great life im­pov­er­ish­ment. Thou­sands of ma­rine species per­ished, and life was hardly yet es­tab­lished on land. This was a time of bi­o­logic tribu­la­tion, the age when life nearly van­ished from the face of the earth and from the depths of the oceans. To­ward the close of the long ma­rine-life era there were more than one hun­dred thou­sand species of liv­ing things on earth. At the close of this pe­riod of tran­si­tion less than five hun­dred had sur­vived.

59:6.3The pe­cu­liar­i­ties of this new pe­riod were not due so much to the cool­ing of the earth’s crust or to the long ab­sence of vol­canic ac­tion as to an un­usual com­bi­na­tion of com­mon­place and pre-ex­ist­ing in­flu­ences—re­stric­tions of the seas and in­creas­ing el­e­va­tion of enor­mous land masses. The mild ma­rine cli­mate of for­mer times was dis­ap­pear­ing, and the harsher con­ti­nen­tal type of weather was fast de­vel­op­ing.

59:6.4170,000,000 years ago great evo­lu­tion­ary changes and ad­just­ments were tak­ing place over the en­tire face of the earth. Land was ris­ing all over the world as the ocean beds were sink­ing. Iso­lated moun­tain ridges ap­peared. The east­ern part of North Amer­ica was high above the sea; the west was slowly ris­ing. The con­ti­nents were cov­ered by great and small salt lakes and nu­mer­ous in­land seas which were con­nected with the oceans by nar­row straits. The strata of this tran­si­tion pe­riod vary in thick­ness from 1,000 to 7,000 feet.

59:6.5The earth’s crust folded ex­ten­sively dur­ing these land el­e­va­tions. This was a time of con­ti­nen­tal emer­gence ex­cept for the dis­ap­pear­ance of cer­tain land bridges, in­clud­ing the con­ti­nents which had so long con­nected South Amer­ica with Africa and North Amer­ica with Eu­rope.

59:6.6Grad­u­ally the in­land lakes and seas were dry­ing up all over the world. Iso­lated moun­tain and re­gional glaciers be­gan to ap­pear, es­pe­cially over the South­ern Hemi­sphere, and in many re­gions the glacial de­posit of these lo­cal ice for­ma­tions may be found even among some of the up­per and later coal de­posits. Two new cli­matic fac­tors ap­peared—glacia­tion and arid­ity. Many of the earth’s higher re­gions had be­come arid and bar­ren.

59:6.7Through­out these times of cli­matic change, great vari­a­tions also oc­curred in the land plants. The seed plants first ap­peared, and they af­forded a bet­ter food sup­ply for the sub­se­quently in­creased land-an­i­mal life. The in­sects un­der­went a rad­i­cal change. The rest­ing stages evolved to meet the de­mands of sus­pended an­i­ma­tion dur­ing win­ter and drought.

59:6.8Among the land an­i­mals the frogs reached their cli­max in the pre­ced­ing age and rapidly de­clined, but they sur­vived be­cause they could long live even in the dry­ing-up pools and ponds of these far-dis­tant and ex­tremely try­ing times. Dur­ing this de­clin­ing frog age, in Africa, the first step in the evo­lu­tion of the frog into the rep­tile oc­curred. And since the land masses were still con­nected, this pre­rep­til­ian crea­ture, an air breather, spread over all the world. By this time the at­mo­sphere had been so changed that it served ad­mirably to sup­port an­i­mal res­pi­ra­tion. It was soon af­ter the ar­rival of these pre­rep­til­ian frogs that North Amer­ica was tem­porar­ily iso­lated, cut off from Eu­rope, Asia, and South Amer­ica.

59:6.9The grad­ual cool­ing of the ocean wa­ters con­tributed much to the de­struc­tion of oceanic life. The ma­rine an­i­mals of those ages took tem­po­rary refuge in three fa­vor­able re­treats: the pres­ent Gulf of Mex­ico re­gion, the Ganges Bay of In­dia, and the Si­cil­ian Bay of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin. And it was from these three re­gions that the new ma­rine species, born to ad­ver­sity, later went forth to re­plen­ish the seas.

59:6.10160,000,000 years ago the land was largely cov­ered with veg­e­ta­tion adapted to sup­port land-an­i­mal life, and the at­mo­sphere had be­come ideal for an­i­mal res­pi­ra­tion. Thus ends the pe­riod of ma­rine-life cur­tail­ment and those test­ing times of bi­o­logic ad­ver­sity which elim­i­nated all forms of life ex­cept such as had sur­vival value, and which were there­fore en­ti­tled to func­tion as the an­ces­tors of the more rapidly de­vel­op­ing and highly dif­fer­en­ti­ated life of the en­su­ing ages of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion.

59:6.11The end­ing of this pe­riod of bi­o­logic tribu­la­tion, known to your stu­dents as the Per­mian, also marks the end of the long Pa­le­o­zoic era, which cov­ers one quar­ter of the plan­e­tary his­tory, two hun­dred and fifty mil­lion years.

59:6.12The vast oceanic nurs­ery of life on Uran­tia has served its pur­pose. Dur­ing the long ages when the land was un­suited to sup­port life, be­fore the at­mo­sphere con­tained suf­fi­cient oxy­gen to sus­tain the higher land an­i­mals, the sea moth­ered and nur­tured the early life of the realm. Now the bi­o­logic im­por­tance of the sea pro­gres­sively di­min­ishes as the sec­ond stage of evo­lu­tion be­gins to un­fold on the land.

59:6.13[Pre­sented by a Life Car­rier of Neb­a­don, one of the orig­i­nal corps as­signed to Uran­tia.]

• harsh continental weather in Permian

60:0.1The era of ex­clu­sive ma­rine life has ended. Land el­e­va­tion, cool­ing crust and cool­ing oceans, sea re­stric­tion and con­se­quent deep­en­ing, to­gether with a great in­crease of land in north­ern lat­i­tudes, all con­spired greatly to change the world’s cli­mate in all re­gions far re­moved from the equa­to­rial zone.

• changes in c. changed civilization

78:8.11From 2500 to 2000 B.C. the no­mads were on a ram­page from the At­lantic to the Pa­cific. The Ner­ites con­sti­tuted the fi­nal erup­tion of the Caspian group of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian de­scen­dants of the blended An­don­ite and And­ite races. What the bar­bar­ians failed to do to ef­fect the ru­ina­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, sub­se­quent cli­matic changes suc­ceeded in ac­com­plish­ing.

• changes in c. changed civilization

80:1.4But dur­ing ear­lier times there was lit­tle to hin­der the west­ward mi­gra­tion of the Adamites. The Sa­hara was an open graz­ing land over­spread by herders and agri­cul­tur­ists. These Sa­ha­rans never en­gaged in man­u­fac­ture, nor were they city builders. They were an in­digo-black group which car­ried ex­ten­sive strains of the ex­tinct green and or­ange races. But they re­ceived a very lim­ited amount of the vi­o­let in­her­i­tance be­fore the up­thrust of land and the shift­ing wa­ter-laden winds dis­persed the rem­nants of this pros­per­ous and peace­ful civ­i­liza­tion.

• changes in c. changed civilization

80:2.1The early ex­pan­sion of the vi­o­let race into Eu­rope was cut short by cer­tain rather sud­den cli­matic and ge­o­logic changes. With the re­treat of the north­ern ice fields the wa­ter-laden winds from the west shifted to the north, grad­u­ally turn­ing the great open pas­ture re­gions of Sa­hara into a bar­ren desert. This drought dis­persed the smaller-statured brunets, dark-eyed but long-headed dwellers of the great Sa­hara pla­teau.

• changes in c. changed civilization

80:3.8About fif­teen thou­sand years ago the Alpine forests were spread­ing ex­ten­sively. The Eu­ro­pean hunters were be­ing driven to the river val­leys and to the seashores by the same cli­matic co­er­cion that had turned the world’s happy hunt­ing grounds into dry and bar­ren deserts. As the rain winds shifted to the north, the great open graz­ing lands of Eu­rope be­came cov­ered by forests. These great and rel­a­tively sud­den cli­matic mod­i­fi­ca­tions drove the races of Eu­rope to change from open-space hunters to herders, and in some mea­sure to fish­ers and tillers of the soil.

• changes in c. changed civilization

80:9.6For al­most twenty thou­sand years the An­don­ites had been pushed far­ther and far­ther to the north of cen­tral Asia by the And­ites. By 3000 B.C. in­creas­ing arid­ity was driv­ing these An­don­ites back into Tur­kes­tan. This An­don­ite push south­ward con­tin­ued for over a thou­sand years and, split­ting around the Caspian and Black seas, pen­e­trated Eu­rope by way of both the Balkans and the Ukraine. This in­va­sion in­cluded the re­main­ing groups of Adam­son’s de­scen­dants and, dur­ing the lat­ter half of the in­va­sion pe­riod, car­ried with it con­sid­er­able num­bers of the Ira­nian And­ites as well as many of the de­scen­dants of the Sethite priests.

• decisive factor in early civilization

81:1.1For about thirty-five thou­sand years af­ter the days of Adam, the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion was in south­west­ern Asia, ex­tend­ing from the Nile val­ley east­ward and slightly to the north across north­ern Ara­bia, through Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and on into Tur­kes­tan. And cli­mate was the de­ci­sive fac­tor in the es­tab­lish­ment of civ­i­liza­tion in that area.

81:1.2It was the great cli­matic and ge­o­logic changes in north­ern Africa and west­ern Asia that ter­mi­nated the early mi­gra­tions of the Adamites, bar­ring them from Eu­rope by the ex­panded Med­i­ter­ra­nean and di­vert­ing the stream of mi­gra­tion north and east into Tur­kes­tan. By the time of the com­ple­tion of these land el­e­va­tions and as­so­ci­ated cli­matic changes, about 15,000 B.C., civ­i­liza­tion had set­tled down to a world-wide stale­mate ex­cept for the cul­tural fer­ments and bi­o­logic re­serves of the And­ites still con­fined by moun­tains to the east in Asia and by the ex­pand­ing forests in Eu­rope to the west.

81:1.3Cli­matic evo­lu­tion is now about to ac­com­plish what all other ef­forts had failed to do, that is, to com­pel Eurasian man to aban­don hunt­ing for the more ad­vanced call­ings of herd­ing and farm­ing. Evo­lu­tion may be slow, but it is ter­ri­bly ef­fec­tive.

81:1.4Since slaves were so gen­er­ally em­ployed by the ear­lier agri­cul­tur­ists, the farmer was for­merly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was con­sid­ered me­nial to till the soil; where­fore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the great­est of all bless­ings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sac­ri­fices of the pas­toral life were held in greater es­teem than the of­fer­ings of agri­cul­ture.

81:1.5Man or­di­nar­ily evolved into a farmer from a hunter by tran­si­tion through the era of the herder, and this was also true among the And­ites, but more of­ten the evo­lu­tion­ary co­er­cion of cli­matic ne­ces­sity would cause whole tribes to pass di­rectly from hunters to suc­cess­ful farm­ers. But this phe­nom­e­non of pass­ing im­me­di­ately from hunt­ing to agri­cul­ture only oc­curred in those re­gions where there was a high de­gree of race mix­ture with the vi­o­let stock.

• decisive factor in early civilization

81:6.31. Nat­u­ral cir­cum­stances. The na­ture and ex­tent of a ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion is in large mea­sure de­ter­mined by the nat­u­ral re­sources avail­able. Cli­mate, weather, and nu­mer­ous phys­i­cal con­di­tions are fac­tors in the evo­lu­tion of cul­ture.

81:6.4At the open­ing of the And­ite era there were only two ex­ten­sive and fer­tile open hunt­ing ar­eas in all the world. One was in North Amer­ica and was over­spread by the Amerinds; the other was to the north of Tur­kes­tan and was partly oc­cu­pied by an An­donic-yel­low race. The de­ci­sive fac­tors in the evo­lu­tion of a su­pe­rior cul­ture in south­west­ern Asia were race and cli­mate. The And­ites were a great peo­ple, but the cru­cial fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the course of their civ­i­liza­tion was the in­creas­ing arid­ity of Iran, Tur­kes­tan, and Sinkiang, which forced them to in­vent and adopt new and ad­vanced meth­ods of wrest­ing a liveli­hood from their de­creas­ingly fer­tile lands.

• parable of discerning the weather

157:2.1On Mon­day, Au­gust 8, while Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles were en­camped in Ma­g­a­dan Park, near Beth­saida-Ju­lias, more than one hun­dred be­liev­ers, the evan­ge­lists, the women’s corps, and oth­ers in­ter­ested in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, came over from Ca­per­naum for a con­fer­ence. And many of the Phar­isees, learn­ing that Je­sus was here, came also. By this time some of the Sad­ducees were united with the Phar­isees in their ef­fort to en­trap Je­sus. Be­fore go­ing into the closed con­fer­ence with the be­liev­ers, Je­sus held a pub­lic meet­ing at which the Phar­isees were pres­ent, and they heck­led the Mas­ter and oth­er­wise sought to dis­turb the as­sem­bly. Said the leader of the dis­turbers: “Teacher, we would like you to give us a sign of your au­thor­ity to teach, and then, when the same shall come to pass, all men will know that you have been sent by God.” And Je­sus an­swered them: “When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the heaven is red; in the morn­ing it will be foul weather, for the heaven is red and low­er­ing. When you see a cloud ris­ing in the west, you say show­ers will come; when the wind blows from the south, you say scorch­ing heat will come. How is it that you so well know how to dis­cern the face of the heav­ens but are so ut­terly un­able to dis­cern the signs of the times? To those who would know the truth, al­ready has a sign been given; but to an evil-minded and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion no sign shall be given.”